A U.S. soldier was wounded today in Sangin, highlighting a tragic irony about the Afghanistan war | MilitaryTimes

An American Special Forces soldier was severely wounded Thursday when his base was attacked in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, raising to at least six the number of U.S. troops injured in combat nationwide so far this year.

Speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Army Gen. John Nicholson indicated the unidentified soldier was wounded in Sangin, an endlessly violent district within Afghanistan’s poppy heartland. Cultivated in abundance there, the lucrative crop used to make heroin has come to represent a tragic irony about America’s longest war: